Best Keanu: “You run this rotten evil forest. And you stole all those cookies to discredit me and Mary.”

In a brief Google search to try to fill in some of the gaps of this weird and terrible movie, I came across a 2019 Syfy article: “34 thoughts we had while watching the 1986 Babes in Toyland.”

I haven’t read the piece yet, for fear I will find myself adopting some of those 34 thoughts while I try to formulate some of my own. But I’ll give it a read before I post this, because myself and the venerable people at Syfy must share some thoughts.

I’ll start with this thought. Thank god for Point Break. Because without Point Break there would be no Speed, no Matrix, no John Wick. Maybe those films would still exist, but they would be without Keanu Reeves, which means they wouldn’t be the iconic movies they are. And Keanu, without Point Break, might have continued to do minor roles in great films or big roles in terrible films, the industry never quite catching on that Keanu’s real forte — with some exceptions — comes when he’s dropped in the middle of an action sequence. As a non-violent, peace-loving quasi-modern-hippie person, I’d hate to say that Keanu Reeves does best as an actor when he’s holding a gun. But Keanu Reeves does best when he’s holding a gun, or doling out some movie martial arts.

Babes in Toyland is very, very early Keanu. He was surrounded by bigger stars, not the least of whom was a then very popular Drew Barrymore, whose experiences as a child actor are infamous for their tragic nature. No one had a childhood quite like Drew Barrymore’s. In 2021, or thereabouts, when she talked about Keanu Reeves on her talk show, she said she finds him so hot — but feels saying so is “inappropriate, because I did a movie with him when I was like 11 years old.” (I’m paraphrasing from an old memory.) That’s something only someone like Drew Barrymore could casually drop into conversation: “oh, you know, we did a movie when I was 11, so whatever…” Just your average Tuesday.

Before going further into my thoughts about the weird and terrible Babes in Toyland, I’ll take a side note here to talk about a story Drew told about Keanu when he came on her show to promote The Matrix Resurrections.

As Drew tells it, she was at a club on her 16th birthday. Keanu strolled in, took her by the hand, and led her outside. He placed her on his motorcycle and took her “on the ride of her life.” She describes it, in the clip below, as “I was so free. I was such a free human being.”

If you watch the clip, you’ll probably get the impression, as I did, that Keanu doesn’t remember this incident. But it’s clearly very alive and precious in Drew’s memory.

On one level, it’s borderline inappropriate. She was 16, he would have been about 26. But remember also they did a movie together when Drew was 11. They knew each other, and he just took her for a ride on his motorcycle. It’s perhaps a bit of a risky thing to do, taking off at high speeds in an urban setting. But what has always struck me about this story from the first time I heard it is how Drew, obviously, even in retrospect, felt safe.

Feeling safe is no small thing. It is often when you feel safe that you realize how long you’ve been without that feeling of safety. Feeling safe should be the default for all of us, regardless of age or gender, but it so often isn’t, for those who are very young. That was especially the case when Drew Barrymore was 16 — I know because I was 16 then, too. I didn’t have her childhood, but I have felt unsafe, sometimes in the ways you don’t realize until years after the fact.

That’s what’s particularly striking about Drew’s story — that, 30 years after it happened, she still regards it as a happy and positive memory. She does not reflect upon the story with unease and realize that she was vulnerable and harmed. So she must not only have felt safe, but been safe.

The upshot is that the story to me is evidence Keanu Reeves is fundamentally a good person. One might say now, in 2023, that of course she was safe with him, because acting in any way that might make a 16-year-old feel unsafe is reserved for only those who are, well, bad people, and hopefully there are fewer and fewer of them around.

To that I respond with the early scenes of Babes in Toyland, where it is written in the script that the older sister of Barrymore’s character is the subject of advances from her much older boss. Yes, it sets him up as the bad guy, but it’s also an example of how common it was at that time for women to be sexualized in everyday conversation. To be a woman at this time was always to be on guard. When you suddenly felt safe, that’s when you realized you’d been on guard for years.

[*]

Babes in Toyland was a television movie that aired on NBC in 1986. For that reason, I didn’t originally have it on my list of Keanu movies to watch. I’ll save the explanation why, today, I finally decided to give it a go. And I’m so glad I did, because what a terrible and weird movie this is.

According to Wikipedia, what I watched was the edited version, a mere 94 minutes, when what aired on NBC was a whopping 145 minutes. I am not sure I want to know what was in that extra 49 minutes, but according to wiki it was even more musical numbers and “transitional dialogue.” I am trying to imagine those North American living rooms in the latter days of December 1986, when they sat down for three hours of what they imagined would be a delightful family Christmas romp. They would have sort of got that, with a little bit of the sinister mood of The Dark Crystal thrown in. (I don’t much remember The Dark Crystal, but that’s what came to mind seeing Richard Mulligan’s team of evil-doing trolls).

Babes in Toyland looks like it has the lower-budget of a television movie, with the set and costume designers doing their best on what one assumes was limited funds. On that note, why did they film this in Germany? A set in California could have easily done the job and, one would have assumed, would have been cheaper.

[*]

That’s about all I have to say. Now I’m going to read Syfy’s take and see what I missed.

I agree with all 34 thoughts. Read them here. Since the author seemed to have watched the 145-minute version, I am not sure if I envy or pity them.

(August 2023)